When it comes to the 'discrimination' issue, I think it's interesting that minority voters don't vote for minorities to represent them. There are 1.34 million people living in Estonia. Seventy percent of them are ethnic Estonians. Eighty-five percent of residents are citizens. That means that about 18 percent of the parliamentary electorate are minorities. [Of the remaining 15 percent of non-Estonian citizens, about half are citizens of other countries, and half (7 percent) are still stateless]

So, 18 percent of voters are minorities, and yet I count 9 minority members in the new parliament (One Reform member, one from Social Democrat, and seven Centrists). So, why didn't those 18 percent of voters choose other minorities to represent them? It's also hard to say "who" is a minority. Some minorities were born in Estonia, have grown up in Estonia, and there is little to distinguish them from other Estonians other than their name, or primary language. This may be the ultimate answer. Minority identity in Estonia is a slightly vague concept. Even if your representative's name is Igor and he speaks Russian as his primary language, it doesn't necessarily mean that he represents all "Russian-speakers" in Estonia. Meantime, you could have an ethnic Estonian MP who does a better job on minority rights.

I think one factor that has not been openly discussed here (but is strongly hinted at) is experience. Ansip has been in office since 2005, he's navigated the country through some pretty dramatic events (the monument crisis, the economic crisis), and has earned respect from most citizens for his simple ability to stay in office. Remember that most governments prior to Ansip's managed to stay in office for a maximum of two years.

The conservatives, IRL, have been in and out of power since 1991. Who had a longer pedigree at the helm than Mart Laar? Again, people vote for him not just because they agree with his politics, but because he seems to know what he is doing.

As for the opposition, the fact that they managed to get as many votes as they did, shows that not all people are pleased with the ruling coalition. Especially outside the cities where either Reform or Centre dominated, the first or second largest vote getter was the Social Democrats. This is a party that has been pretty marginal: a Labour-lite third wheel that was handy in forming coalitions against Centre but little else. This is also in a country where any hint that a person is left-leaning makes them suspicious, because of the implicit link to Communism. I think the fact that a Social Democratic party could get a fifth of the vote in Estonia shows a change in the outlook of some Estonian voters.

Some comments here have touched upon the 'ethnic issues' in Estonia, implying discrimination of non-Estonians by the native folks. All these talks are quite silly, in fact they are simply not true and it's high time people realized that.

First, there is no hostility between ethnic groups based on ethnicity. Granted, there are a few thousand individuals both among Estonians and Russians who hate the other group as a matter of principle, but they are too few to be even called marginal. The real watershed is not the ethnic background, but mentality. There's quite a large proportion of residents (citizens and non-citizens, Russians, Estonians and other folks) who see the independence of Estonia as just a temporary aberration in the course of history, a mistake on the map of Europe, which Moscow will soon set right. This is the group that he majority of loyal population has problems with, but even so, given the controlled temperament of Estonians, it very rarely amounts to more than frustrated muttering under one's breath.
The people in this group (unless their native language is Estonian) flatly refuse to learn the language, considering any suggestions to this effect an insult. They also refuse to apply for citizenship by way of naturalization (which would mostly require learning 2000 words of the Estonian language and a pledge of loyalty to the country) - although this refusal is in many cases casued by the fact that they would then lose the opportunity of visa-free travel to Russia (right now they enjoy the best of both worlds).

Apart from all that, there are no problems whatsoever. In the company that I work for (IT), about 40% are Russians. No one complains and everyone gets along just fine. Most people have some good friends or at least acquaintances on both sides of the ethnic line. All government and municipal institutions also provide their services in Russian. (Unfortunately, the reverse is not true in the areas of predominantly Russian population, but we don't complain. Except to ourselves, sometimes.) There are Russians among the richer folk and the poorer folk, just like with every other nation. There are Russian language TV channels, radio stations, newspapers, all sorts of entertainment, bookstores are full of Russian literature.

What sort of discrimination can anyone see here?

Oh, the non-citizens can only vote at local elections, not the parliamentary. Well, if you want to vote for the parliament, get a citizenship. No obstacles, just a minor effort required.

Your online article about the results of Estonia’s parliamentary elections (E.L.,“Estonia busts another stereotype”, Mar 7th 2011) reports correctly that the election made the prime minister, Andrus Ansip, a happy man. However, the rest of the article provides grossly misleading information about the election, the attitude of the electorate toward Mr. Ansip and the political and economic situation in Estonia.
The statement that “voters seem willing to trust him” is apparently based on inadequate understanding of Estonia’s peculiar and quite undemocratic election system. About 83 percent of the electorate did not vote for his party, and cannot, therefore, be assumed willing to trust him.
It is also generally accepted that many Estonians who voted did so only to keep the premiership from Mr. Savisaar, who, you correctly reported, is backed mainly by the country’s large Russian electorate. Estonians are in the unhappy position of becoming a minority in their own country. The first post-Soviet government, headed by Mr. Laar of the “pro patria” IRL party, made the fatal “anti-patria” mistake of granting permanent residence, and thus eventual citizenship, to all the Russians sent by Stalin to occupy Estonia. The electorate has increased by 40 percent since the first post-Soviet parliamentary elections, at the time when the population of native Estonians has actually shrunk. The increase came obviously almost entirely from resident Russians being granted Estonian citizenship. When their percentage surpasses 50, Estonians will be a minority in the country which they have inhabited since the end of ice age made it inhabitable.
Estonia’s peculiar election system, adapted by the parliament to perpetuate its power, is particularly contemptuous of the will of the voters. Members of parliament are elected not in accordance to the vote they received, but by their sequence on the party candidate list, generally determined by the party leader. For example, one new Member of Parliament received only 303 votes. Another candidate, Mr. Leo Kunnas, who was 35th in the number of votes received for the 101 member parliament, will not be seated because he ran as an individual.
The unemployment rate stands by best estimates at 20 percent, rather than the 14 percent you report. The number of Estonians who have left their homes to seek work elsewhere is exceeding the approximately 10 percent of Estonians who fled the country to escape Stalin’s Red Army to become refugees in Sweden or displaced persons in post-WW II Germany.
Your statement that Mr. Ansip “is certain to keep the prime minister’s post” may also overstate the situation. He does hold most of the trumps, but a coalition of the three other parties represented in the new parliament, if they can agree on how to divide up the spoils, can remove Mr. Ansip from power.

Garbage! While it's true that the Center Party is severely tainted in the eyes of most ethnic Estonians for it very friendly relations with the Kremlin (also for it's autocratic style, shameless flaunting of electoral good practice, demagogy, populism, parochialism and cronyism), but the Social Democrats have no such black marks against them.

If the great majority of Estonians were really against the coalition's policies, didn't care about keeping a structural budget balance and wanted bigger government, then the Social Democrats would have won a landslide in this election.

Instead, the SDP, while making the biggest improvement over last time and gaining nine seats, are still only the fourth largest party with 19 seats out of 101.

While starting out with a general word of thanks for the Baltic region monitoring done by Economist writers, I have seen Eastern Approaches analyses that hit the mark better than this one.

I beg to differ on the characterization of the Reform Party. A party that doesn't dismantle a literally limping social medicine system nor set such a goal is neither free-market nor libertarian. Underpaid doctors and nurses (and above all the younger ones) are leaving Estonia in droves. In such a place, you have two choices if you have cardiological distress that doesn't appear to be downright life threatening, or let's say debilitating nerve pain: you can wait the month or five weeks that can't be waived, or you can cajole and bribe your way to the front of the line.

A more accurate description of the Reform Party would include its substantially nomenklatura beginnings, as opposed to the partially dissident pedigree of Pro Patria. Take the name of the Reform party: it has its roots deep in the late perestroika period, when convertible cash quickly became king, if not a golden calf.

As concerns economic philosophy, neoliberal is a better calibrated description of Reform than "liberal", and above all it is not libertarian, as it is sometimes inaccurately pigeonholed.

Agree with the writer who doubts austerity is worth the pain and results in prosperity for all in the near future. For the specifically Estonian culture, the pied piper call of Los Angeles and Australia is bleeding us white, the way that Ireland lost so many of her sons and daughters once, as did Sweden.

Disagree with the person who thinks the South Korean model of enterprise incubation and temporary protectionism is untenable in the cold Baltic region. True domestic free enterprise rather than the EU "free movement of everyone and everything" fetish cult would have been my choice.

Two major elements of these elections are not noted in this feature. The first is the ineptness of the Center Party, which is a false flag operation and does not resemble a Northern European center party in the slightest, for those are classically agrarian-traditionalist setups. The Center Party is substantially Moscow-minded, disgustingly slippery in its electioneering, and makes pitches to the Russian part of the population and to the less well-to-do. For a party that courts those towards the bottom of the income spectrum to lose three seats in parliament during the aftermath of a recession that is just a stone's throw away from depression is major case of FAIL. He or she who is too inept to mobilize the poor under such circumstances deserves what he or she gets.

Finally: the departure from the scene of the People's Union of Estonia - a transition period agrarian party that drew its strength substantially from the wreckage and aftermath of the collective farms abomination of the occupation period - is a red letter day in Estonian politics. To be finally rid of the "Red Baron" Arnold Ruutel - a Soviet era collaborator similar to Ceausescu (there are those who claim that he changed his stripes later, which may be true to some extent, when it was obvious which way the wind blew) is great in my opinion. Good riddance.

Eastern Europe has never undergone a process similar to the denazification of Germany after the second big war, which is a tragedy. Fortunately, nature has a way of eliminating oil slicks and communist occupation catastrophes in a sadly slow evolutionary way. Sad for me, for I doubt I shall see an Estonia really made whole again in my lifetime. Call it plan B. The Estonian composer Arvo Part recently said that in 40 years, most of the Soviet residue will be gone. That process continues.

The Reform Party will eventually change its silly name, Edgar Savisaar will shuffle off this mortal coil, and it is not likely that the People's Union - a Soviet-sounding name if I ever heard one - will be able to clamber out of the grave that it ham-fistedly dug for itself. A new day dawns, but not fast enough for me.

The Economist is at it again. Telling it's readers that austerity is worth the pain and results in prosperity for all in the near future. The election result in Estonia doesn't validate this view. Every informed reader knows that elections in the Baltic are not about the economy but about ethnic affiliations. It's Russians versus us. In reality Baltic people vote on the Baltic economy with their feet and mass emigrate.

I've got a lot of respect for Estonia. I've been following them for many years and they seem to just do what's right for the good of their country no matter the difficulty and naysaying. I suppose its from an inherent toughness from living under USSR rule.

The Article States: "Mr Ansip's electoral victory is remarkable given his government's record: it has pushed through an austerity programme (around 9 % of GDP)"
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This does not surprise me. Here in the United States we are hungry for a strong leader that will make the tough spending cuts necessary so save us from the looming debt induced economic crash that is ahead of us. Where are the strong leaders that we need ??

Greens will return to parliament after next elections, I dare say. They had some internal problems and that reflected on bad election results. Greens are more popular among younger generation and they have a bright future :)

What is notable for all of the governments battling fiscal crisis, is that austerity really is an option that the electorate would support- contrary to what the mainstream political discourse tends to argue. Estonia is now second after Latvia to prove the point.

Interesting, it is rare to see a classically liberal party perform well any where, in most western countries they where squeezed out by the over whelming support for protectionism at the beginning of the twentieth century. Either ending up as the 'progressive right' of center left parties or the 'progressive left' of center right parties. I find myself jealous of Estonia, which to be honest is odd, considering i have always found its position on its Russian minority to be rather repugnant. On the whole i guess Estonia is reaping the reward of 'national consensus', some thing that i wish that we could return to here in Australia, and lets be honest, the United Kingdom needs a good dose of.

As an American from the state of Illinois, I wish my politics were this "boring." i am impressed with Estonia's focus, they are working with what they have, fixing problems and tackling opportunities, setting themselves up nicely for long term growth.